I Vitelloni - Criterion Collection (1956)

The First Great Fellini Film

A `vitello' is a veal calf, one year of age or less and not yet weaned. A `vitellone' is an overaged or overgrown unweaned calf - and also is slang for a young man who remains sheltered and inactive and has yet to create a real life of his own. This 1953 film is an obvious source for every subsequent movie about young men who stay in the shelter of family and neighborhood, failing to live really autonomous lives despite their pretensions, `Diner' and `Breaking Away' among them.

This film also tells us a lot about how far Italian society has come in just 8 years since Italy served as a major battlefield in World War II. Earlier Italian films like The Bicycle Thief (1948) Germania Anno Zero (1948) and La Terra Trema (1948) were about the brutal struggle for barest survival. But this film is very different: it is about the problem of options and choice, problems that do not become paramount until the society has, for many of its members, already solved the survival issue.

In La Strada (1954) Fellini returns to look at those for whom survival remains a brutal struggle. But by La Dolce Vita (1960) he is looking at the problems of alienation and anomie for a society that now creates a newly wealthy upper middle class, as did Antonioni's l'Avventura of that same year. The growing prosperity and change in Italian society can be seen in the progression from the films of 1948 to the films of 1960.

Fellini's look at Italians and Italian society is, as always, laceratingly satiric. But it is also clear that this satirist enjoys and feels a great fondness for that which he is satirizing. Like Nights of Cabiria (1957), I Vitelloni has worn very well over the years. Both of those films stand up well beside the more reknowned La Strada and La Dolce Vita. The first great Fellini film, this is a beautiful, warm and funny classic.
July 29, 2008

A sumptuous masterpiece!

Il vitelloni was another evidence of the vital creativity of FEFE: Filmed just eight years after the bloody WW2, it mirrors the way of living of four inseparable friends, whose main leader -Faust-is forced to marry with Sandra, after she is pregnant. He will be forced to get a job to maintain his family, but his obsessive spirit of seduction will lead him at the edge of disaster. Then, every member of this peculiar group must follow his own bliss. One of them -Leopoldo - is a sensitive intellectual, who intends to write a dramatic play; while Moraldo as the brother of Sandra, remains between the fidelity to his friend and his duty as brother .

Somehow, this winner film in Venice Festival 1953, might be the Italian answer to "Rebel without cause" , when a raising generation emerged after the ashes of the War, simply lived out the social conventions, and living freely without restrictions.

But the way Fellini builds this admirable movie, taking into account the little and profound divergences around the familiar circle (as we may realize in the case of the sister of Alberto who has fallen in love with a married man)carves in relief , the devastating consequences of such dramatic shock that permeated all the layers of the society.

One of the most important films in the first stage of this genial filmmaker. And please, just think in those films such as Vincent, Francois, Paul and the others directed by Claude Sautet 1974; We loved each other, 1985 directed by Ettore Scola, or Monicelli `s film (My friends and realize the deep influence of this gem of 1953 over these movies.

November 5, 2007

I Vitelloni

Fellini's touching, semiautobiographical first feature--the title translates to "wastrels" or "layabouts"--is the quintessential recounting of a now-clichéd tale, so it's no surprise that Coppola, among others, borrowed the premise for his "American Graffiti." Drawing on his own beginnings, Fellini creates one of the crowning coming-of-age stories, a meditation on the bonds of loyalty, friendship, and home that features early glimpses of the maestro's fascination with all things carnivalesque, and a memorably bittersweet farewell. This, Fellinin's breakthrough film, is one of the director's more human and accessible works. June 26, 2007

Fellini in transition

I Vitelloni signalled Fellini's move away from neo-realism, with all the trademarks (dwarves, older women, outrageous costumes, anecdotes replacing narrative) that would later become so exaggerated making brief and more naturalistic appearances in his apparently aimless tale of a bunch of time-wasting friends in a small coastal town where the biggest events are growing a moustache or sideburns. That it somehow becomes more than the sum of its parts is quietly magical in its own way, and the amiably dry narration linking the events and non-events underlines the ebb and flow of the film nicely. Oddly enough, I was struck by the similarities to Tony Hancock's later 'The Punch and Judy Man,' which seems to touch on several aspects of small-town inertia without ever hitting the same heights.

Criterion's DVD offers a superb transfer with a good retrospective documentary Vitellonismo which reveals a surprising degree of studio opposition to casting Alberto Sordi (then thought to be box-office poison after the disastrous commercial failure of Fellini's The White Sheik with the actor but whose career would virtually be made by the film) as well as the original theatrical trailer, stills gallery and booklet. June 14, 2007

An Iconic Landmark

Barry Levinson's "Diner" must have been inspired by this ground-breaking work of genius from 1953 written by Federico Fellini. Both "I Vitelloni" and "Diner" are about five males who linger somewhere between childhood and manhood, sensing the greater world beyond their small domain, but who are incapable of breaking out of the protective comfort of what they know so well. Both directors are known to have given their actors little in the way of direction. Both accepted their actors on their own terms, as the people they were, and let them embody the characters they played as naturally as water embraces the shape of the objects it fills. For me, "I Vitelloni" is by far the greater work. It's the template from which every other work about aimless youth has been pressed. Much of what takes place in this movie is autobiographical, and some of it is coaxed from Fellini's dreams and passions. As a great artist, Fellini changed the way we see ourselves, and the word "vitelloni" itself became a new expression for soft, well-fed young people with no direction. Only his second film, the first being the box-office flop "The White Sheik," starring Alberto Sordi, Fellini took his sweet time putting this together. He shot it over a period of four months in various locations, none of which was Rimini, the city of his youth. He was just 30 years old, full of wit, spontaneity, humor, and joy, all of which would slowly fade away with the oncoming years. Alberto Sordi again appears here, even though he was obviously not liked by the viewing public, but he is triumphant as Alberto. In fact, there isn't a weak performance anywhere to be found in this fantastic cast. Entertaining from the opening moment to the closing poignant scene, this masterpiece is all about a specific group of young Italian men, almost a leisure class supported by their families, who must come to terms with women, their dreams, their families, and themselves. And it is about a much larger theme: what makes up a meaningful life? For one character who eventually leaves this small town, Moraldo, the search itself for meaning draws him away. Moraldo is, in fact, a stand-in for Fellini, as he left Rimini at the age of 17 to seek his fortunes in Rome. What meaning he found was in his cinematic art, his writing, and his directing. We are privileged to bear witness to that genius by viewing the treasures that sprang from his mind.
And in particular, this version of the movie on "The Criterion Collection," put out in 2004, provides us with wonderful insights into this work as well as informative interviews from original cast members and the assistant director. I personally couldn't ask for more.
If you want to see a true cinematic masterpiece, get this movie. If you don't like it, check to see if you're still breathing. January 29, 2007

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